Beauty Underneath
by El loopy
Summary: Gustave decides that its time to help Erik see the beauty underneath once more. Oneshot. Post-musical.


Beauty underneath

Silence. That was how Gustave thought of the days after his Mother's death. Usually he walked through life floating on notes, the melodies in his head a constant companion. It was as though the gunshot had been so loud it had shattered anything softer; knocked the life from Christine and the sound from his head. Silence. The man he couldn't quite yet recognise as his Father was also silent. The music did not play for him either. It had died with Christine. Gustave grieved. At ten he did not truly understand grief. The Phantom knew it so well he embraced it like a Siren and let it drown him.

They had left Coney Island behind in a blaze of flames. Gustave had not seen the fire, he was already safely away, but he smelt the smoke on his new Father's clothes when the man joined him and he guessed. He did not ask. He had learnt not to ask from his old Father. He could not decide if Mr Y were scarier…but he seemed safer.

They were walking down the streets at night as usual so that Erik's mask was not seen to be questioned. Gustave had been curious as to the plan and had been told in a broken voice that they would go North, along the coast. He wondered if it were really a plan or one made up to satisfy him. He decided it didn't matter. When there was no music to guide you, no plan was needed. So they travelled, and stopped briefly, before travelling again. Never ending.

Gustave was walking with his head down, eyes unseeing but something made him lift his gaze. The house on the opposite side of the road, set apart a little from the others and further back from the road. His attention caught, snagged, and he stopped to stare. It had been empty a while. The paint had flaked away fully in places, the windows were boarded, and the porch was missing planks. Gustave could hear something quiet and eerie start to develop in his mind. The garden was a tangle of wild flowers and grass, ivy crawling over the boarded windows with ancient fingers, trying to tug back the protection. He could not describe the feeling inside him, but he recognised it. There was only one way to channel the intensity. His fingers twitched for a piano that wasn't there. The song was building in his head and music was twisting around him for the first time in weeks.

"Gustave?" Mr Y had stopped, noticing the boy was no longer at his side. Gustave was caught in the strains of the music, even as part of him waited for the anger and the shouting that his old Father had used when he became like this.

He was surprised when it did not come. Instead he felt the shadowed presence stand behind him.

"What is it Gustave?"

The music was coating the house. Why could this man not see it? They usually saw things the same way…or had used to. Grief, Gustave decided, was a cloudy substance. The music had always been there, it was he who had stopped seeing it; grief a veil over his eyes that needed to be torn. There was plenty of room for it in his heart after all. He needed to help Mr Y see.

"Can you not hear it?" whispered the boy. He looked at the front gate and began to hum a few notes before stopping.

"It is just an old house," Erik said wearily. Gustave shook his head.

"There's beauty underneath," he whispered. Drawn by the music the ten-year-old crossed the street and through the gate as though in a dream. Erik followed a pace behind.

"This…" Gustave gestured the front porch and hit a few imaginary keys with his fingers. For a second Erik saw it, he saw what the child saw…what his _son_ saw, before it vanished again.

"Come," he murmured and led the way around the back. "Let's see inside."

Gustave did not observe how Mr Y went about opening the back door; his eyes were on the white trumpet shaped flowers in full bloom in the wilderness of the garden.

"Like teardrops of moonlight," he sang to himself, the key sweet and soaring.

"Gustave, come."

Erik watched in wonder as his son turned elegantly, eyes alight with joy, and stepped into the house.

"Can you see it yet, Monsieur?" Gustave whispered, still not quite ready to call this man Father, as they stepped softly through each room. He saw the echo of notes of what had been once. There was still some furniture here and there. The odd chair or table. Discarded and left behind. The floor creaked a little under the dust and shadows. Erik could still only hear silence but there was something in the presence of the house that made his mind still and a glimmer of something tug at the veil of grief.

"Not yet, Gustave. My eyes are clouded," he replied, watching, "but maybe you can show me through yours."

The next room held a piano with no stool and Erik felt a sharpness in his chest, abruptly stopping. Gustave, heedless, ran forward with a small cry of delight. His fingers quickly found the notes he wanted. The piano was broken and did not ring true, but he coaxed from it the sounds he needed, expressing the intensity he felt inside. Mr Y remained frozen in the doorway, the disjointed melody strangely appropriate.

Gustave looked at the man from across the room.

"We could fix it," he sang softly, "you and I," and suddenly Erik understood. He saw what the boy saw. Rooms, now dark, filled with light and furniture. A room lined with bookshelves. Things that were broken, or old, or chipped, fixed. This room with a piano, sheet music, candles. The veil shredded slightly, and Erik knew the tug of the presence of the house. Home. The house was singing Home. That was what Gustave was playing. Somewhere broken things could be fixed.

"You see?" the boy questioned from the piano.

"Yes," Erik replied softly. "It's going to take some work to make it liveable."

Gustave shut his eyes, a smile on his face for the first time in weeks.

"But at last, you can see now, the beauty underneath."


End file.
